Daniel and the flowers

A Story by angelina neves

http://www.writerscafe.org/contests/Flowers/9585/ Flowers: Write a short story based on or around your favorite flower. (an "old one"!)

Today I whish I could send you a bunch of colorful wild flowers to brighten your day! They kind of showing us there are no black and white in this world, but that everything is full of colors and nuances of every color and there is always something beautiful in a flower, in life, in the air we breathe.

Flowers, any flower, especially wild flowers, always make me wonder about beauty. They always remind me of Daniel, my older son, when he was a small child, 30 years ago: He loved flowers!

He was born one year after Mozambique has become an independent country. It was a happy time of hope for a better world! There was too much to do but all of us were young and full of energy, believing we were building something really special, a different society of friendship, solidarity, and where we would eradicate misery, discrimination, and we would be an example to the entire world. We would show the world how it was possible to have a place with out violence and exploitation! And Daniel was the most special baby of the entire universe! (I know all children are or should be!)

In our house, a ground floor with a little gardener, I had a flower-bed just for him as he loved to do gardening and to plant and transplant plants all the time!

At that time, in our country we had supplies with ration, so we could divide what ever we had by all in the country. We had a monthly ration of sugar and Daniel liked very much to put a lot of sugar in his milk and cereals. I was always telling him:

- be careful because the sugar will end before the end of the month and then you will not have sugar during some days, and I will not have sugar for my coffee…

Once, at the beginning of the month, when we had pick up the monthly ration, I come home and didn’t find the sugar… I was sure the sugar had come home! I looked all around and it was missing. Then I remember to asked Daniel, he was 4 to 5 years at the time, if he had seen the sugar.

Very happy with himself, he took me by my hand and showed me proudly his flower bed explaining to me:

- I plant it all! When it grows we can put all the sugar we feel like in our milk and cereals and in your coffee!

I couldn’t do anything else but give him my congratulations for the idea! And then explain to him that now we had no more sugar, as it takes some time for plants to grow… and… well, that sugar wouldn’t grow because…

Lucky me! I have the most fantastic sisters and brother and they all gave us some of their sugar and so we could have the sugar for that month!

But this was just to tell you that life has always flowers, special wild flower, growing anywhere, with different colors, infinite nuances of colors and you just have to look around! And if we don’t see them, we can always go outside and plant sugar to sweeten life and laugh about it!